Show HN: UXHunt – Your Daily Dose of UX Intelligence (and Our Side Project) - <AUTHOR> https://www.uxhunt.com <comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch ( and HN's hug of death ;) ).

Some feedback:

\- Body copy on the cards might not be easy to read for some folks - it has a really low contrast ratio... just checked... it fails AA.

\- Using Industry Demi at that size doesn't help with legibility either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feed back. \- We have fixed the contract ratio and it seems to pass now. \- Yes considering we are redirecting users to original owner of the articles, we thought of using this so it sticks to our original aesthetics but we are looking at some replacement fonts.

Thumbs up for the feedback :)

Hug of Death was very warm :P

<comment><USER3> As another data point, I dislike the font as well and consider it hard to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would have expected to feel a little more comfortable on a website made by user experience experts. Instead, it feels like a dark room where you search a book with a flashlight (exciting, but not comfortable).

<comment><AUTHOR> We never intended to come our was user experience experts - I have made a repo; rather a blog to add articles created by the actual 'experts' so enthusiast like ourselves can share and learn.

But we are just starting - every feedback will be taken into consideration to further improve the product. This is just the beginning.

<comment><USER5> Nice site! I'm thinking that maybe the stuff at the bottom could go at the top because it's hard to get to the bottom. I was confused as to what this was until I found (and was able to click in time- a little game) the 'about' tag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Website header seems to be somewhat broken – [https://vgy.me/sYvBta.png](https://vgy.me/sYvBta.png) (Firefox 62 & Chrome 71)

</comment><comment><USER7> Very nice! I am getting an IndieHackers vibe from this (which is a good thing). I definitely think there's a need for a curated list of UX reads, so thanks for putting this together.

I would advise against the dark background though, it makes things harder to read as your eyes aren't able to make out the grid of elements as clearly. Like the aforementioned IndieHackers, if you want to go dark, use a not-quite- black shade, like a dark purple or dark blue.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. Love the idea. For me I'd like to see better readability and information destiny. The headlines are more important than the pictures. Most images don't tell me much about what the item will be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat site, though I think you might have just got a hn hug of death? On a MBP13, it has a janky horizontal scroll as the view is just a little too large.

</comment><comment><USER10> First rule of good UX: Make it work.

<comment><AUTHOR> First rule: Make sure servers are strong enough to handle traffic. this is not UX - its more of the tech :)

<comment><USER10> Doesn't "UX" stand for "User Experience"?

<comment><USER11> UX is such a nebulous idea. Practitioners of UX spend half of their time wondering whether what they are doing is actually UX and the other half of their time accusing other practitioners of not doing UX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a very jarring user experience when every link I click opens a new window and goes through 3 redirects before the article loads. The user should control where content loads, not the page. If I want it in a new window, I'll right click and choose "Open in new window".

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like its down, getting 503 and 508

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, not sure if I'm missing something here, but it seems like something's a bit off with the menu on mobile with this site. When I tried to open it on a smartphone, all I got was a white block with a bit of text in, and on responsive view on a desktop it simply doesn't load at all.

Seems like that may be a bug you may want to look into there.

</comment><comment><USER15> We have similar problems at Designed.org with spikes, luckily we've moved to React and distributed some things on AWS and we've been much better off. Keep up the good work, we need more design education resources out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Give me your email - let's see if we can work together!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> White page on FF Android. View source says the page is empty.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can I suggest that you add sub categories in the UI Kits section to know at a glance if a kit is for Sketch and/or AdobeXD?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback - we were actually thinking of adding tags for it which can be filtered. once we increase the assortments of the UI Kits - we will be sure to add this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Update_

Should be up in the next 30 minutes lads. Thanks for so many up votes. Highly appreciate it so far.

</comment><comment><USER18> 5 hours later still down, I guess I won't underestimate HN hug of death anymore me too

</comment><comment><USER19> It crashed although you used Cloudflare? I'm interested in a post-analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. it was because we started with a basic go daddy server moving it to DO now. Jeez. noob mistake.

<comment><USER20> Did DO fix your problem? I know their packages are tiered, I would think it would still break. Do you have numbers on how bad HN Hug hit you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _UPDATE_ Website is backup!

Waiting for another HN Hug of Death......jk...we are prepared.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Being on top and website dead due to HN Hug of Death is SOOO EMBARRASSING

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there newsletter for which I can sign up ?

</comment><comment><USER22> "Resource Limit Is Reached"

<comment><AUTHOR> Massive traffic hit us and we are trying to bring it back now. HN traffic was unexpectedly huge lol

<comment><USER23> How huge? If I may ask...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Jup sites down

<comment><AUTHOR> Massive traffic hit us and we are trying to bring it back now. HN traffic was unexpectedly huge lol</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for a service that gets you in the door with an executive? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've worked on a similar service (targeted to job hunters) and have spent a lot of time researching the broader market for it.

It turns out there are some problems.

One is the pay-to-play problem [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_play) that opens up all sorts of ethical issues. Consequently, many companies prohibit their execs from entering into arrangements like this.

Even beyond that, bypassing the traditional gatekeeping methods through a cash payment is exactly that -- a bypass method.

And assuming those traditional gatekeeping methods are in place to protect the executive's time and the company's reputation, it's just not something that a lot of truly powerful and smart execs will be on board with.

That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of expert-as-a-service consulting companies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_as_a_service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_as_a_service) but generally their experts only perform consulting, rather than letting you pay to pitch them your product.</comment>


Could Aspirin Be the Key to Supercharging Cancer Immunotherapy? - <AUTHOR> http://reliawire.com/supercharging-immunotherapy/?utm_content=bufferc94ce&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[https://crick.ac.uk/news/science-news/2015/09/03/aspirin- sup...](https://crick.ac.uk/news/science-news/2015/09/03/aspirin-supercharged- cancer-immunotherapy/)

The original has links to their blog, the paper, and an animation.

(September 2015)</comment>


Fixing Rust Dependencies Vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/flipchan/fixing-rust-dependencies-vulnerabilities-5gkl <comment><USER2> Just because I don't see it mentioned anywhere in the post - this can be done locally using cargo-audit [1] [2]. Cargo-audit also has a recommended setup for Travis CI [3]

[1] [https://github.com/rustsec/cargo-audit](https://github.com/rustsec/cargo- audit) [2] [https://crates.io/crates/cargo- audit](https://crates.io/crates/cargo-audit) [3] [https://github.com/RustSec/cargo-audit#using-cargo-audit- on-...](https://github.com/RustSec/cargo-audit#using-cargo-audit-on-travis-ci)</comment>


Android Interview Study Guide - <AUTHOR> I have assembled this study guide which was heavily inspired by Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. I also have pulled from other various sources. Instead of having to go through and re-read some of these lengthy books and blogs each and every time it comes time to prepare for an interview, I created this guide to speed up this process. There may only be a handful of topics you want to brush up on and that is why I created this. Enjoy! https://gist.github.com/lawloretienne/6f7d7d92f72986f5ebd60f226d9044ee <comment><USER2> Clickable: [https://gist.github.com/lawloretienne/6f7d7d92f72986f5ebd60f...](https://gist.github.com/lawloretienne/6f7d7d92f72986f5ebd60f226d9044ee)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks. It is a great resource for studying.</comment>


A network of movie connections mined from 154,000 reviews - <AUTHOR> http://cinetrii.com/blog/uncategorized/a-network-of-movie-connections-mined-from-154000-reviews/ <comment><USER2> Nice</comment>


Boot: Getting Started with Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://lionfacelemonface.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/boot-getting-started-with-clojure-in-10-minutes/ <comment><USER2> One of the things that nags me about boot, is that it recommends using file extension `.boot`. Is it just me?

Is there any specific advantages to using another file extension rather than using `.clj`

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason we use a different extension is because a build.boot file is not semantically a Clojure file.

Clojure's default namespace is 'user'; .boot files run in 'boot.user'. Clojure only automatically refers clojure.core; we refer clojure.core and also boot.core.

So, dependencies notwithstanding, Clojure wouldn't be able to make sense of a build.boot file, and we think the .clj extension would be disingenuous.

We differ in these ways from .clj because one of our goals was to make it easy to create Clojure applications as single scripts.

The downside is users must configure their editors to get syntax highlighting, but we think this is the lesser evil.

<comment><USER2> The problems you mention seem generic issues others face when using clojure in similar ways. So may be we can convince clojure core developers to add hooks that provide these features without having to introduce new fileextensions each time somebody needs to refer an extra namespace by default.

Just a suggestion. But the current solution seems reasonable until then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's some mention of clojure being used as a scripting language here that can be invoked with a shebang - does anybody know if the way this is done is any different (performance-wise) than compiling a leiningen project to an uberjar?

When I've tried using clojure for really simple things, like a "Hello, World" program, and compiled this to a jar to run with something like "java -jar hello.jar," the time it takes to start up the program is pretty abysmal. I'd like to use clojure for something on the Raspberry Pi, but it can take about 30 seconds to run "Hello, World!"

Any secrets to getting it to start up faster, or am I just stuck?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately Clojure start time is about the same regardless of build tool, and it's especially not good on the RPi.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I guess you're right. I'm considering buying an Odroid, maybe startup will be a bit faster (hopefully it's not this bad for all ARM devices)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> what's the difference between boot and leiningen?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good comparison: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/clojurescript/yxpDGv6RrXQ/Fs...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/clojurescript/yxpDGv6RrXQ/FsyxlK9pf44J)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I absolutely refuse to use this because of the inappropriate name of the tool. It is far too general to be anywhere near what I would consider well-named, and seems mostly just a lazy convenience. cloboot would work just as well, and give a user some chance of associating the name of the tool with the purpose of the tool. (I already have a boot.)

<comment><USER6> When you install the tool you can name it whatever you want. I have qualms about "just download this binary and execute it, trust me" installation methods, but the advantage is you can put it wherever, and name it whatever suits your system.

I recommend naming it 'unicorn-slomp'. Or 'mustash-cash-stash' \- but you can pick your own cartoons to make a reference to, you are totally empowered here.

<comment><USER5> Better if the canonical name was just set in a sensible way by its proprietors...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why in the world would you use Boot over Leiningen if you've never used Clojure before? `lein repl` and you're on your way.

<comment> al-king 'boot repl' works just fine too.

Imperative builds are a different mindset - where lein projects feel like a different language which emulates Clojure syntax, boot feels more like a library, and context switching is a favourite HN bugbear. Being able to program a build can be a boon, where otherwise you might've had to rely on the creator of your build tool catering to your special case with an appropriate flag.

In practice, though, I've never created a project with very interesting builds in either tool, I only dabble in Clojure. The test will ultimately be whether the community finds it useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see myself ditching lein anytime soon, but I'm glad to see some competition in this area.</comment>


Show HN: An easy-to-use Google Speech API wrapper along with WER implementation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bhanu-mnit/Google-Speech-API <comment><USER2> I was looking for this exactly today.

However, it doesn't seem as easy-to-use as [https://github.com/psirenny/node- google-speech-api](https://github.com/psirenny/node-google-speech-api), for example.</comment>


Terror management theory - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory <comment><USER2> What's really interesting to me that psychology twitter seems to have a rabid hatred for TMT which I find really strange since, at the very least, Becker's book (the Denial of Death) lays out a pretty reasonable foundation (much more reasonably than the vast majority of psych papers I've read) for a lot of human psychological behavior.

Becker's view is pretty straight forward: We cannot incorporate a true understanding of our inevitable death into our psyche and function, so basically a huge amount of the complexity of our psychology is based in ways our mind is able to divert accepting this reality. When I was younger I though "fear of death" was a wildly over blown notion (I remember reading Delillo's White Noise and thinking "is death that scary?"). But as I got older, and started having friends die, I realized that in youth I was just much more deeply in denial of death. Needless to say I think Becker makes a good point.

For me, the violent reaction by the psychology community against TMT seems to only add validity to Becker's idea. We really can't deal with the reality of our own personal death, and that is so strong that on an intellectual level we immediately was to laugh off the idea so that we don't have to face that this might even be the case.

<comment><USER3> What does it actually mean to "be in denial of death" though? How does our mind divert accepting this reality? I've never experienced that; it sounds somewhat dramatic.

<comment><USER4> There is an excellent "hidden brain" podcast episode about TMT.

It is not conscious.

One of the consequences is that it makes you want to belong to a group and makes you chastise people that go against its moral norms. One of the experiments was to determine the amount of an amend (or was it bail?) a prostitute would have have to pay.

The expected amount is $100 and that's what the control experiment got, but if you remind the judge of their own mortality before asking that question, the median amount jumps to $400.

edit : link to the expy : [http://people.uncw.edu/ogler/Experimental/TM%201.pdf](http://people.uncw.edu/ogler/Experimental/TM%201.pdf)

<comment><USER5> The authors are very liberal in what they consider as evidence for their theory. The first experiment, with the judges, relies on a sample size of 22, from which any sort of analysis of variance is pretty suspect--the partial eta squared effect size confidence interval at a = .05 ranges between nearly zero and more than .4. The second experiment has a similarly wide CI on the effect size. The article claims to have provided robust, data-based evidence of TMT, but the experiments that followed from the earlier ones must be judged in consideration of those earlier ones, which puts into question the coverage of alternative explanations.

Consider this claim:

"The major finding of Experiment 1 was that, as predicted,reminding subjects of their mortality led them to recommendhigher bonds for an accused prostitute. According to terror management theory, moral principles are part of the culturalanxiety-buffer that protects individuals from anxiety concern- ing their vulnerability and mortality. Transgressions againstthese standards implicitly threaten the integrity of the anxiety-buffer and thus engender negative reactions toward the trans-gressor. Inducing subjects to think about their mortality pre-sumably increased their need for faith in their values, and thus increased their desire to punish the moral transgressor"

The experiment, to them, is confirmation of their theory, but this hardly follows as a parsimonious explanation that emerges by eliminating alternative explanations.

Frankly, I find the article absurd, and I have difficulty taking the theory seriously. Then again, I only have an undergraduate's understanding of the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one." -- Confucius

</comment><comment><USER7> _" But on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of all our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely._

 _Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself._

 _Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us._

 _Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures._

 _The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself._

 _This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us. "_

Blaise Pascal, 1670

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting, "Terror management theory" is not what i expected it to be. Probably influenced by the modern history and current dynamics, I didn't expect it to be about evolutionary psychology or death-related cognitions, I expected macro-economics and political theory.

<comment><USER9> Well according to that theory things like nation states or big economic interests or religions exist because of death anxiety. So yeah, going to a political rally or protesting civil rights abuses even if you're not abused, participating in wars, etc. is triggered by death anxiety and the need to do "something more".

 _" We go out of our course to make ourselves uncomfortable; the cup of life is not bitter enough to our palate, and we distill superfluous poison to put into it, or conjure up hideous things to frighten ourselves at, which would never exist if we did not make them."_

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay, 1841

<comment><USER8> > things like nation states or big economic interests or religions exist > because of death anxiety

Interesting, it makes sense on the surface but not if you dig dipper. I doubt that this fear has ANY impact on nation states or big economics, fear of death is very well situated and certain conditions must be met to trigger it, meaning it's not predictable, not constant, and can not be a major driver in global politics or economics. Sex and mating on the other hand, is a completely different story, I find the idea of sex being the major factor, influencer, and driver behind global trends and economics a lot more plausible (I'm a Freud's fan)

<comment><USER10> > I find the idea of sex being the major factor, influencer, and driver behind > global trends and economics a lot more plausible (I'm a Freud's fan)

Sex and death are often viewed in opposition. Psychotherapist Esther Perel has described eroticism as "an antidote to death" and the essay "Why Men Love War" [1] describes the use of sex by soldiers to forget about the death and destruction around them. TMT would argue that the influence of sex in society is precisely due to its effectiveness at distracting us from death.

[1] [https://public.wsu.edu/~hughesc/why_men_love_war.htm](https://public.wsu.edu/~hughesc/why_men_love_war.htm)

<comment><USER8> Oh nice! Great argument! But correlation does not imply causation. When you are talking about feared solders, you are most definitely talking about a war. Wars are about the assertion, or defense of the right to power (mostly done/triggered by political elites), and there can not be more sexual thing other than power, even pre-historically, we can agree that power gives you freedom, freedom of choosing your mate. It gives you options. Gyms, healthy diets, financial success, fashion, entertainment, all these are driven by sex, by desire, desire to mate. Sex is not about distraction, sex is about power. when we are talking about politics or macro-economics, fear of death is not relevant or even considered at all.

Your argument actually confirms how powerful sex is. A lot more powerful than what we give it credit for.

<comment><USER11> Association does not imply causation either. Your entire argument is simply association. You say soldiers and then you associate war; you say war and then you associate power; you say power and then you associate sex. What you are not being plain about is that you choose each association. You could have chosen another; there is no reason offered for why we have to consider this particular chain of associations.

This is how so much psychoanalysis worked, by the way, and is part of why that school lost credibility.

Your final point, turning the commenters argument around on itself, is a masterful example of rhetoric but not of argument or explanation. Of course, you leave open the question of why sex is important to us; of what it draws its importance from.

<comment><USER8> That is a great dissection of my comment but it does not provide any reason to doubt my arguments other than a falsy appeal to an authority (psychoanalysis.. right, the thing that "failed").

I have made some argumentative choices strictly because I find those visual and colorful within the scope and the nature of the discussions on the "interents".

Sex is the major driver behind evolutionary dynamics in nation states, and macro-economics, and I have yet to see any evidence suggesting otherwise.

And hereby I "masterfully" shift the burden of proof onto yourself, SolidSnack9000.

Unless you have a solid argument, we can dismiss your comment as a "dissection of banality", an argument for the sake of the said argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> TMT exists because of the delusion people have from thinking free will is a real thing. Once the illusion of having free will breaks, understanding of how death will come and just how every event happens in your life happens by fate. Although, I think my fear of death went away when thinking about infinity and how the universe can repeat the conditions that made this very life occur for eternity.

</comment><comment><USER13> Denial of Death by Ernest Becker is a great read.

<comment><USER14> I read it (well, parts) on a long plane ride recently. It's an interesting book—very 1970s and very much looking back to the existential psychotherapists and psychoanalysts of the mid-20th century. I do not say that as a bad thing, on the contrary.

What surprised me most is how big a role Otto Rank plays in it. I only knew of Rank as the originator of the birth trauma theory and thought he was a minor disciple of Freud. Becker regards Rank as the greatest figure in the tradition after Freud if not greater. It made me want to learn more about Rank's work.

<comment><USER15> Rank's "The Myth of the Birth of the Hero" elaborates what Becker meant by "society as a heroic system", to a certain degree. I myself still in pursue of "Art & Artist" paper copy, regarded as his magnum opus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At the core, every sentient being loves being alive, and every mind wishes to be immortal, and not be lonely.

All the icky crap comes from knowing that can't be.

The subconscious dread of death is also a form of the Fear of Missing Out. How much cool tech and new discoveries will there be after us? I for one cannot cope with the possibility that I may never get to see a proper ending to Game of Thrones or a good Dungeons & Dragons movie.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out)

<comment><USER17> >At the core, every sentient being loves being alive, and every mind wishes to be immortal, and not be lonely.

This is a strong universal claim about a fact, and I'm pretty sure that it is not true. While probably generally true for young people, research on older people suggest that not everyone wishes to be immortal and some are actually in peace with the approaching end of their life.

Just one result from a quick search: [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=info:doi/10.137...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0150686)

<comment><USER16> > * While probably generally true for young people, research on older people > suggests that not everyone wishes to be immortal*

Exactly, by very definition of getting "older", they already know it's damn well not going to happen. They feel their frailty and corporeal limitations, and have lost other people to mortality, so they learn to cope with it, via the very topic of this post: Terror management or whatever you want to call it.

I said at the core, because the purpose of any mind is to, well, mind. If a mind wishes to cease to exist, it's because it's unable to attain its desires and knows it will never have enough time (for some, to even find a desire in the first place.)

I've always been fairly morbid myself. If given a choice, I'd choose to be immortal or never have come into existence at all, rather than this temporal teaser.

Like the comment below by rinchik [0], our global culture encourages every mind to .. _succumb._ We're discouraged from feeling, from the core essence of sentient existence.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298809)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was pretty good …

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760599683/were-all-gonna- die-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760599683/were-all-gonna-die-how-fear- of-death-drives-our-behavior)

</comment><comment><USER19> The word suicide does not appear on that wikipedia page. I'm curious how that phenomenon fits with TMT being all about death avoidance. It seems like something that should be covered.

</comment><comment><USER20> Love it, agree with it, can't face death, no fucking way. Motivates me to work out every day.

</comment><comment><USER21> To the extent that people believe that they are part of a much greater whole, then this takes on an entirely different context.

</comment><comment><USER22> Terror Management Theory is recursive.

</comment><comment><USER23> If God is a stranger, Death is an enemy. When God is a Friend, Death is a friend.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hi HN. I'm feeling sad today. I just wanted to say that I hope all of you are having a good weekend and working on interesting projects or just enjoying life.

Be good to yourselves!

<comment><USER8> [https://www.talkspace.com/](https://www.talkspace.com/) is for feeling sad, not HN.

HNers are here for the intellectual stimuli and thus may not give you what you are looking for.

<comment><USER25> I think it's ok to be human for a minute, even for HN.

<comment><USER26> Much like Stack Overflow I think HN could actually be more useful if it lightened up a little. It needn't instantly degenerate to reddit if a joke or feelings are allowed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best Paper Awards at ACL 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://acl2020.org/blog/ACL-2020-best-papers/ <comment><USER2> If anyone likes checking out other lists of best paper awards, I've been collecting them (with the help of a few individuals and AllenAI) at [https://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards/](https://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards/)

There's 29 top CS conferences there with best papers since 1996. And NeurIPS and ICSA will be added soon...

<comment><USER3> What an interesting collection, thanks!

It's kind of surprising to me that Microsoft Research is the all-time leader, gathering more best paper awards than any top university. Wow. This in itself tells a story about Microsoft Research.

Do you happen to have a time series on this? Would be interesting to see the trends in your data, e.g. to check how industrial research fares vs. academic research as a function of time. (There are some theories suggesting that industrial research is in a general decline [0]. Though the "best paper awards" metric is surely far from being perfect, it might still be viable as a proxy for corporate research performance.)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23246672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23246672)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the comments. I don't have it in time-series format. You could scrape the page pretty easily to get it (even just a grep should get you most of what you want). I'm not sure if the N is big enough per year to give a reliable trend graph, but you're welcome to try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> GAIA: A Fine-grained Multimedia Knowledge Extraction System[1] looks pretty impressive. It's a huge amount of work they have done there - I guess DARPA funding buys a big team. The source is all available[2] but looks like a fair amount of work to get running.

[1] [https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.acl- demos.11/](https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.acl-demos.11/)

[2] [https://github.com/GAIA-AIDA](https://github.com/GAIA-AIDA)

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for posting. I was curious on "Climbing towards NLU: On Meaning, Form, and Understanding...". Interesting that a best paper award was given to a philosophical paper on distinction between meaning and form.

<comment><USER6> every couple decades, there is a new approach that promises to do solve more of the language understanding problems with less of humans actually thinking about and understanding the inner workings of language. Each time we get a phenomenon which is best described with the hype cycle analogy, namely consistent progress of what it can do, along with even faster progress of what people expect from the technique, until the actual progress cannot keep up with expectations and we settle at a new (much progressed but much disillusioned) level.

BERT, GPT-2 and now GPT-3 have brought us to the tail end of such a hype cycle, with the most enthusiastic DNN enthusiasts still claiming that it's understanding meaning and general AI isn't far off, whereas the folks who give out ACL Best Paper awards (all long-time experts in their field) probably sigh and are thankful for a paper that breaks with the hype and tells the overenthusiasts that there's still stuff left to understand and discover.

Do we need mediocre philosophical papers when we can have mediocre technical papers (or even fairly decent technical papers) instead? Hell no. But do we occasionally need a good and thoughtful philosophical paper to sober ourselves up? Admittedly yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't read past the abstract, but "Tangled up in BLEU: Reevaluating the Evaluation of Automatic Machine Translation Evaluation Metrics" is an _excellent_ title.

<comment><USER4> Great title and a great problem to work on.</comment></comment>


Yamaha DX7 – The Synthesizer That Defined the '80s [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1Ha0MMT0aA <comment><USER2> I own two DX7 synths and love them. They are very misunderstood, really. One myth is that they're difficult to program, this isn't true; they're just different to program.

Analog synths are easier to program because they have all the parameters available as pots (a good thing!), however they are massively simpler in parameters than a DX7, where you have basically (per voice): 6 oscillators, 6 envelope generators (each with 8 parameters), 2 LFO, and features like feedback, keyboard scaling, etc. More parameters, thus more laborious programming IF you want to do complex sounds.

The other myth is that the sound is horrible. This all depends on programming and it doesn't help that most of the DX7 original patches were horrible.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was one of the lucky kids who played piano in Jazz band and had a DX7 in high-school during that era. Pretty great to see it living on as a retro music tool.

This video went beyond my knowledge of creating sounds back then, but did bring back memories of playing Axel F (I'm almost ashamed to admit this) before jazz band class started.</comment>


Turning USB peripherals into BadUSB - <AUTHOR> https://srlabs.de/badusb/

<comment><USER2> Why are USB controllers reprogrammable?

Is it in the standard? (Why?)

Or is it cheaper somehow?

<comment><USER3> To turn one device type into another, USB controller chips in peripherals need to be reprogrammed.

edit: usb-rubber-ducky also comes to mind.</comment></comment>


Why engineers hate your shitty job specs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/engineering-leadership/why-engineers-hate-your-job-specs-c5dd755fd216

<comment><USER2> I get the point that job spec should help to sell the company, but as far as being specific about problems domain that's less important to me.. I just want someone that's smart and get's things done. There is no specific problem they are hired for but wide net of problems. this may be different at a company that's working in a more narrow field? in my line we usually look for full stack developers with business acumen + hunger and drive. now get me a spec for that!

</comment><comment><USER3> The example was better ... how? It said general things like "Rails is one tool you use...", "Passionate about..." and "Able to leave your ego at the door...". None of those is a tight job spec for an engineer - in fact except for the Rails reference it could be anybody. Marketing, management, janitor.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the part about arming others to help you. I've found this to be critical. The more your job specs reflect the excitement of working at your company, the more other people can evangelize that for you.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've found describing the kinds of problems you'll solve (not in a salesy way) and what the company actually needs help doing can really engage the minds of potential hires.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd actually like to see some examples of over-describing problems to engineers in a salesy way. That could be a fun follow on post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a hiring manager definitely fallen into this pattern. Note to self, rewrite my job listings!</comment>


Norden Bombsight (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.twinbeech.com/norden_bombsight.htm <comment><USER2> _Postwar analysis

Postwar analysis placed the overall accuracy of daylight precision attacks with the Norden at about the same level as radar bombing efforts. The 8th Air Force put 31.8% of its bombs within 300 metres (1,000 ft) from an average altitude of 6,400 metres (21,000 ft), the 15th Air Force averaged 30.78% from 6,200 metres (20,500 ft), and the 20th Air Force against Japan averaged 31% from 5,000 metres (16,500 ft).[46]

Many factors have been put forth to explain the Norden's poor real-world performance. ... _

from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight#Postwar_analy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight#Postwar_analysis)

<comment><USER3> The story of the Norden bombsight is remarkable in a whole bunch of different ways.

1) As an historic example of the US putting an inordinate amount of faith in high-tech solutions to military problems, only to be disappointed with how those solutions actually performed when they reached the field. (This story being a hardy perennial: see also the Browning Automatic Rifle, the Mark 14 torpedo, the M16 rifle, the F-111 fighter, the M2 Bradley AFV, the F-35 strike fighter, etc. etc. etc.)

2) As a cautionary tale of building your security plan around the wrong threat model: Nordens in the field were subject to extraordinary security measures to prevent them falling into enemy hands, none of which mattered because the Germans had a spy inside the Norden plant who had already passed them the plans for the bombsight three years before the U.S. even entered the war ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duquesne_Spy_Ring#Herman_W._La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duquesne_Spy_Ring#Herman_W._Lang)).

3) As an early example of PR prowess from what would become known as the military-industrial complex: while the bombsight itself was kind of a dud, the Carl L. Norden Company (with the eager assistance of the USAAF) were adept at selling it to the public as a kind of wonder-weapon. As an example, here's a 1943 story from _Life_ magazine about Norden partnering with the Ringling Bros. circus to work the bombsight into a show in Madison Square Garden: [https://books.google.com/books?id=EU4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA27&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=EU4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA27&ots=NweZxvCOCQ&dq=norden%20bombsight%20circus&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q=norden%20bombsight%20circus&f=false)

<comment><USER4> Absent from this list: Laser guided bombs, thermal imaging systems, the F-15 Eagle, the Tomahawk cruise missile, the M1A1 Abrams tank, etc. etc. Examples of high tech solutions to military problems that produced extremely favorable lopsided outcomes when they reached the field.

Any military that places inordinate faith in low tech solutions is liable to lose most of their armor and infantry to an aggressor that they can't even see, much less fight. That seems like the much greater hazard.

<comment><USER3> _> Any military that places inordinate faith in low tech solutions is liable to lose most of their armor and infantry to an aggressor that they can't even see, much less fight_

This would of course come as news to the Russians, who absolutely creamed the much-higher-tech Germans in WW2. It turns out that five lower-tech tanks that start reliably are worth more than one high-tech tank that doesn't.

It's also worth noting that none of the technologies you list have ever been deployed in the field against a real peer competitor, and many have never been used in combat in the roles they were originally intended for. (The F-15 was designed as an interceptor, for instance, but in actual combat has mostly been used as a strike fighter. The M1 was designed to fight Soviet T-72 and T-80 tanks, which it has never had a chance to do -- even at the one real armor battle it has taken part in, the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991, it faced less capable export-version T-72s alongside older T-55 and T-62 derivatives.)

<comment><USER5> The Russian strategy during WWII and the winter war only "worked" because they accepted an enormous loss of troops to compensate for all of their other shortcomings. During the Winter War especially, Russian troops lacked equipment such as white camouflage and a single Finnish sniper killed at least 500 Russian troops.

This strategy may have worked, but it's not acceptable.

<comment><USER6> Also the Russians didn't win in a vacuum. The rest of the allies provided a huge amount of support in the form of lend-lease and supplies. The war of attrition would not have been winnable by Russia alone and came at an extreme cost of human life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moritz Thomsen, in _My Two Wars_ , wrote of service as a bombardier. He quoted instructors as saying things along the lines of "You missed the Ruhr, but you still hit Germany." I don't think that those who served in the bombers had many illusions.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting to learn that there were orders to handle the device with the utmost secrecy within the US air force, while the Germans already had the blueprints:

> But U.S. intelligence experts received a shock when they interrogated > Luftwaffe personnel: The Germans had known the bombsight's secrets even > before the war, thanks to a spy at Norden.

> Herman W. Lang, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been employed as a draftsman > and inspector at the Norden factory during the 1930s. American authorities > didn't know that he had served as Nazi stormtrooper in Germany between 1923 > and 1927. Recruited as a member of the Duquesne Spy Ring, in 1938 Lang > gained access to the plans for the bombsight and hand-copied the blueprints, > which were then smuggled to Germany via ocean liner. [0]

[0] [https://www.historynet.com/not-so-secret-weapon-the- norden-b...](https://www.historynet.com/not-so-secret-weapon-the-norden- bombsight.htm)

</comment><comment><USER9> Ironically the first group of photos are of the bombsite on the Enola Gay -- an atom bomb is the only kind of bomb which the Norden Bombsight could put on target.</comment>


The Most in Demand Skills for Data Scientists: What Are Employers Looking For? - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-in-demand-skills-for-data-scientists-4a4a8db896db <comment><AUTHOR> I just did some research and wrote an article on the most in demand skills for data scientists. Thought some of you data science folks might find it interesting.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find (and solve) interesting business problems? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
My question is two fold:
As an entrepreneur, how would you find an interesting problem to solve? Would you use a website such as InnoGet or InnoCentive? ( http://www.innoget.com/tech-calls )
As a business, if you stumble upon a problem that you don't have the funds or inner staff to properly address, how would you find a company that would be willing to cooperate with you on this particular problem?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> 1\. "Interesting" is way more about your own interests than it is about some inherent trait of a problem. Cultivate your own interests, live an interesting life, and build the skills that would let you contribute. That's a way better way of pursuing problems than waiting for 'the right idea' to land in your lap.

2\. You should say "aw shucks, I guess I can't do everything," and then go back to work on what you're actually focused on. And maybe you tell someone you know who is interested in that domain that you've got an idea that they've probably already thought of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for answering : ) I will try to clarify what I was first aiming at when I asked HN...

1\. Let's put it that way, with a completely made-up example. Suppose that I am an engineer (of whatever field you prefer) with some amount of money, an appetite for learning and after 5-10 years of working, I have failed to find a suitable business opportunity. I could go around and ask every business I know about problems that they have, but I would like to find a way to make this faster - to gain knowledge about relevant problems in an efficient way. What should I do?

2\. Well that is a problem ; ) Would there be a way to bring more problems to light, then? To solve more of them? What prevents people from sharing these problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a very important/interesting question,i wish more people would give they thoughts on it.

I don't think you are approaching the question from the right angle. If by 'interesting' , you mean problems whose solutions would provide a lot of value (whether you want to convert that value into money for yourself, or just looking for the satisfaction of doing some good in the world), then most of those problems are just not problems yet. Nobody has actually identified them as such.If you think of it, before google map,facebook,Uber,wikipedia etc... nobody actually knew that we needed those. The problems were there, just that nobody though of them as problems or nobody could anticipate the magnitude of the value that solving those problem would provide.

I think the guys from Y combinator (or is it from the book zero to one) say it perfectly : 'Which company nobody is building...'.Nobody is building them not because of the lack of resources, but because nobody have found a way to identify them. So to answer your first question, nobody knows how to reliably and repeatedly identify interresting problems.

As you i have been think about this question quite a bit lattly, here my though so far :

1 - The difficulty of identifying worthwhile problems can be though as a form of uncertainty, so learn about strategies to deal with uncertain environment. Zero to one, lean start-up and anti-fragility all treat this subject from different angles : in a nutshell, forget about find the right problem, start multiple small projects, iterate fast, be flexible, invest small and kill then unsuccessful project quietly.

2 - The other strategy is to leverage your particular expertise to identify problem in your domain. Depending on your domain, you might stumble into a niche problem which can generate a a lot of value for yourself (since you would have less competition)

Hope it helps

<comment><USER4> > If you think of it, before google map,facebook,Uber,wikipedia etc... nobody > actually knew that we needed those. The problems were there, just that > nobody though of them as problems or nobody could anticipate the magnitude > of the value that solving those problem would provide.

Is that true? I have thought of all these things, and thousands more. I know of thousands of problems that nobody is working on. I always thought that the hard part was to get people to appreciate these problems, and that it's often too early to attempt to fix them now.

If what you say is true, I will quit my job today and become a billionaire. Finding problems is trivial.

<comment><AUTHOR> is there a way that I can PM you? you seem to have similar questions as I do...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Individuals find problems to solve in one of two ways - meeting with repeated frustration in their work until they realize they can fix it with software or by being exposed to such people and understanding their problems.

For example, I work in information security. I can spot good ideas in the security industry very quickly. I can also critique them very quickly. Not only that, but I have several good ideas that I've jotted down that I know for a fact are excellent SaaS or startup ideas, given a satisfactory technical implementation with enough business savvy.

Conversely, I love home automation, but I don't understand home automation at the business level. I have had plenty of ideas that sound good to me or probably look good on paper which I am hopelessly at a loss to implement correctly because I lack the proper domain experience to do a sanity check on their validation.

One home automation idea I had was to remove the expensive programmers used by high-end audio/video retailers such as Control4, Savant, etc. and build a system that creates an API for literally every single internet-capable device on the market. Instead of customers paying labor for programmers to design custom solutions, they would purchase a well-maintained, consistently updated hardware that has every connection you could want baked in. Want a song to play and lights to flicker when your smart fridge realizes your milk is almost bad? There'd be an API for each of those, down to brand and model, that you could connect IFTT style in a central Nest-like hub.

That probably sounds good. But I don't know enough about the industry. Is this a genuine pain point? Can I really validate this in the market? How difficult would it be to disrupt existing players with their labor-intensive solutions? Would resellers such as Best Buy/Magnolia be accepting of something that isn't as lucrative as them or doesn't have as much margin? How hard would it be to develop hardware or find someone to develop the hardware? What about mass production?

When you have worked extensively in a domain you develop known-knowns and known-unknowns. You progress from thinking you know a little, to thinking you know everything, to thinking you nothing, to realizing you know a lot but there is a lot more to know.

When you haven't worked in a domain, you are completely unqualified to qualify your business ideas in that industry. You don't just have known-unknowns, you have unknown-unknowns. You have no idea what you don't know, so you can't validate your ideas at all. You're floundering about like a non-technical manager trying to hire a backend engineer. Where would you even start in your assessment?

This is why it's horribly inefficient to try and "come up with an idea" artificially. Work long enough in a meaningful domain in a lucrative industry and you _will_ develop ideas. Barring that, go talk to people in an industry. I bet if you interviewed ~1000 waiters about their job you'd have a viable business idea afterwards that you could not have conceived - or would have dismissed - on your own. I know one developer that scaled consumer desktop drag-and-drop enhancing software to five figures a year. He figured out a pain point most people didn't know or didn't care about.

This is all to say that to answer your first question, go work in a domain for a while until you find something that pisses you and your colleagues off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you a lot for taking the time to write this, you have no idea how helpful it is - if I could upvote more than one time I would!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happened to YC Podcast? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Context might be useful. There were a handful of episodes created from Nov 2019 - Jan 2020:

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/podcast/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/podcast/)

<comment><AUTHOR> it's June 2020. No new episodes? Did they give up on the podcast?</comment></comment>


Flame: Massive cyber-attack discovered, researchers say - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18238326#?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> Kaspersky blog has more info: [http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193522/The_Flame_Questi...](http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193522/The_Flame_Questions_and_Answers)

<comment><USER3> Aren't these the guys who wigged out because they thought Duqu was written in an entirely new custom virus language? And it was actually Visual C++? The second most common compiler on the planet? (after GCC) I would take their analysis with a big pinch of salt.

<comment><USER4> Give them some credit. Duqu was written using a nonstandard C extension for OO and it was pretty heavily obfuscated iirc.

<comment><USER3> Not really; they just did OO with C structs and function pointers, this is actually how it used to be done in high- performance code like computer graphics before C++ got fast enough. And the " obfuscation" was passing the -O flag to the compiler...

<comment><USER5> s/used to be done/is/

Also, the Linux kernel, and any other half decent large C program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The reason why Flame is [20MB] is because it includes many different libraries, such as for compression (zlib, libbz2, ppmd) and database manipulation (sqlite3), together with a LUA virtual machine._

SQLite is 500kB, Lua is 150kb, zlib is 80kB, libbz2 is 60kB. Together this comes to less than 1MB, not 20MB. You would need an awful lot of libraries like this to get anywhere close to 20MB.

<comment><USER7> I don't get the point of your comment. Are you saying you doubt it's 20MB? Or that it doesn't include a lot of libraries?

What point are you trying to make exactly?

<comment><USER8> He's pointing out that the explanation for the size given in the article isn't adequate because the facts don't bear it out.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. I particularly wanted to mention that it's entirely possible to ship software that uses libraries like this but isn't 20MB large. But maybe there are a lot more libraries included than are mentioned here (as another poster suggested).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> More technical details (pdf) on: <http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf>

Although the naming differs it has been noted on several blogs that it is the same malware.

<comment><USER10> I always hesitate a little bit when I open a pdf, specially when it is one on malware

<comment><USER11> Note that while the _exploit_ is in the PDF, the _vulnerability_ is in the PDF reader. In practice, Adobe's software is the only attack surface anyone ever exploits, so you can read exploit-laden PDFs worry-free by using a less popular alternative. The same is true with Word/Excel files, etc.

You should still have some kind of comprehensive security solution in place, particularly for a business environment, but use of non-standard software is an effective fail-safe for when your "real" security craps out on you (as it inevitably will).

<comment><USER12> I've no idea why everyone only exploits Adobe's software though. For instance, pretty much all the open source PDF readers are based on a single PDF library called Poppler with a history of security vulnerabilities - exploit that and you should be able exploit all of them in one fell swoop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >> Our estimation of development 'cost' in LUA is over 3000 lines of code, which for an average developer should take about a month to create and debug.

They should do project estimation instead of Security Analysis.

</comment><comment><USER14> "It's easier to hide a small file than a larger module." my mind is blown. small files are not like small rocks. it's a computer!

<comment><USER15> Assuming fairly dense formats (no .wavs or .bmp images), large files necessarily mean more than small files, so they draw more attention to themselves. "Why is /foo/bar using 300MB of disk?" is a much more likely avenue of inquiry than "Why is /foo/bar using 50KB of disk?".

<comment><USER16> Except the last time when 20MB was "large" was in the early 1990s. Today, even _if_ someone goes to clean out their harddrive, a 20MB file is unlikely to even appear on the radar.

<comment><USER17> Unless you're dealing with most corporate mail systems.

<comment><USER18> I don't quite understand what you mean - the 20MB file would stand out on a mail server? I find that unlikely, unless they're running OpenBSD. Is the 20MB file attached to mail messages? That also seems unlikely, if only because that's a really stupid way to design a virus.

<comment><USER19> The reason it's a stupid way to design a virus currently is because that was one of the primary attack vectors in the past. Yes, most decent mail systems will protect against this. But some might not -- might as well use what's worked in the past as well as other options.

Also, what if the mail component were used to hide/archive the virus? Hide a virus attachment from someone to themself, then have some bootstrap code (Outlook/email client exploit, perhaps) that loads the email archived virus back onto the comp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Didn't Sub7 do all of that back in the 90s?

<comment><USER21> right. and it was NOT developed by state.

<comment><USER12> I think hobbyist development of exploits of the kind that lead to Sub7 has mostly fallen out of fashion, to be honest. Most of the stuff out there these days seems to be commercially-driven scamware and phishing and its developers don't have the same incentive to make their code as 1337 as possible. So 90s-style exploit kits and RATs are quite unusual in 2012.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Man, I love hearing the nitty-gritty security details. More like this, please!

</comment><comment><USER23> I assume we are going to see a complicated and interesting dissection a la Stuxnet? The Stuxnet TED talk [0] was really interesting, I ended up giving a talk to my department at work afterwards.

[0] - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS01Hmjv1pQ>

<comment><USER24> Here's a much deeper and more technical presentation Ralph Langner gave on Stuxnet.

<http://vimeopro.com/s42012/s4-2012/video/35806770>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "Currently there are three known classes of players who develop malware and > spyware: hacktivists, cybercriminals and nation states."

Surely that can't be all-inclusive… is it?

<comment><USER26> How could it not be? That is a very broad group. Who else has the motivation to develop and maintain large scale malware/spyware? If you want to be pedantic about it cybercriminal is probably broad enough to be all inclusive.

I guess you could include companies like Sony but they were probably excluded for not having the same malicious intent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd love to know more about the command and control servers. If any of them involve paid hosting that might help to out the guilty party.

<comment><USER18> I would love to see the binary, even if it means waiting until vulnerabilities are patched.

<comment><USER28> At 20MB I would be suprised if it didn't patch itself with new exploits.

<comment><USER18> Hopefully the infected would not only patch but perform quarantines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm fed up by these technically lacking stories that don't give you the details but tell you that its "complex". While I realise that the BBC website is aimed towards the general public I think that it would be beneficial to include at least some technical details.

<comment><USER29> If you're fed up with that, avoid the mainstream media & delve into the blog post linked up above :)

<comment><USER10> Haha! yeah I just finished reading the kinda-more-informative analysis ([http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193522/The_Flame_Questi...](http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193522/The_Flame_Questions_and_Answers)). Seems very interesting. I wish that they would share the samples so other hobbyists could also see what it is like

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The Wired ThreatLevel article is a good alternative summary to the BBC article. <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/flame/>

</comment><comment><USER31> Those paragraphs are so short that it makes me angry.

</comment><comment><USER32> Their conclusion that because it doesn't steal money it can't belong to cybercriminals is bogus and show how little they understand of the industry.

I've heard of researchers from one company dumpster diving the competition. A worm (as amateur as a 20mb one ) could easily be the work of those kind. But i think it gets less press than "evil country" "omg world cyber war" ...not that it may not be happening anyway.

</comment><comment><USER33> We should just convert the comments to a poll. Who is behind this?

<comment><USER34> How would we keep track of scores? would you keep editing your post to reflect changes in voting?

(this is besides the point if it is a good or bad idea. In any case, it is certainly seems novel to me)</comment></comment>


Presearch is building a blockchain-based search engine - <AUTHOR> http://linuxbsdos.com/2017/09/07/presearch-is-building-a-blockchain-based-search-engine/ <comment><USER2> > Presearch is a Canadian crypto-startup building a blockchain-based search > engine to take on Google. It is officially described as a decentralized > search engine powered by the community.

OK, this is enough for me to know Presearch is a bunch of idiots who don't understand neither search, distributed systems, nor cryptography.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is the HN community? - <AUTHOR> While trying to keep your identity private - would you mind sharing your age (range) and job title (engineer, pm, designer, student, etc.)? <comment><USER2> Why? I mean, to what end?</comment>


Projell.com – Simple APIs for synthetic data generation - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm Sumit Srivastava, founder of Projell.com . We made this after dealing with the data hell like low data availability, high data procuring cost, huge time sink for data collection, and privacy concerns over the user data.
This prompted me to build an easy way to generate synthetic data for machine learning models. This primarily uses GANs, but we use techniques which are most efficient for specific usecases.
Areas where we've found it useful are biomedical, drone imagery, satellite imagery, retail, and autonomous mobility.
As already prominent in the ImageNet challenge, the state of the art is using synthetic data to gain higher accuracy. [ https://paperswithcode.com/sota/image-classification-on-imagenet ]
Google, for their autonomous vehicles, used millions of miles of real driving data and billions of miles of synthetic data. It is clear where the world is moving towards.
I would be happy to share the tools with everyone since dealing with data is something we struggled with and don't want anyone to struggle anymore. This is probably only the first step towards building something robust that can reduce as much data hassles as possible, if not all. <comment><USER2> Hey, interesting idea! How do you plan to deal with the sparce dataset in models? Let's suppose I have a biomedical dataset of 200 images, is there a minimum dataset requirement?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Farmify! This is a great question. I have designed it with medical data (among other challenging verticals) in mind too. Infact, one of the medical companies we're working with has exactly the same problem as yours: sparse data. High cost and privacy is deflecting them from what can be said as having better ML models fast. For them, we see what can be the generalised anomalies and scale those anomalies up to a background dataset. This helps us take care of the the limitations of the datasets they already have with them.

Not a minimum dataset requirement for now, but yeah- the more the merrier.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks, OP here! Happy to answer any questions you might be wondering about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi! What kind of data are you planning to generate? Is it images only?</comment>


Why Sony's Breach Matters - <AUTHOR> http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/2014/12/21/why-sonys-breach-matters/

<comment><USER2> This is one of the strangest suggestions for security that mobile apps and cloud based solutions are more secure then on site???</comment>


3D Printed Gun Smuggled Into Israeli Parliament - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.co.il%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2F1.2062826&act=url <comment><USER2> The thing I don't get is how a plastic gun suddenly becomes a problem if it's 3D printed.

You can construct (a very crude) gun barrel for .22LR out of 3/4" plastic bar using nothing more than a 1/4" drill bit. You need a mechanism to fire the round, but since you just need to crush the primer, it doesn't have to be anything fancy. Of course you have no rifling and a poor seal so the bullet tumbles and isn't effective more than 10-20 ft away, but it's deadly up close.

Since plastics became commonly available over 50 years ago, I don't understand why everyone is suddenly concerned about plastic guns from 3D printing. What is a criminal more likely to do, buy a 3D printing machine for several hundred dollars, learn how to use the software correctly and print a gun OR just buy some plastic and make one himself for $10 and a few hours of his time?

<comment><USER3> He may not do that, but he could go and buy a plastic gun for $10 from someone who does know how to use a 3D printer.

Think about this: a curious kid could accidentally shoot himself now in many fewer steps than before. Download, load it into dad's printer, assemble. Though, I'm assuming these plastic guns still need real bullets.

<comment><USER4> "Curious kid" could also drink bleach or fall from a roof or bite into an electric cable or spill a boiling soup on his head. That's what parents are for. If the kid is smart enough to use dad's printer, he has the mental capacity to understand the dangers. If the parents didn't educate him it's their failure.

<comment><USER5> But aren't parents supposed to keep dangerous chemicals away from the reach of curious children?

They can be told over and over of the dangers, but get a few together and all those warnings can flee their brains. If the stuff is inaccessible, then they can't --I mean, unless they're insolent, but most children will refrain from braking into locked closets. Leave things out and it's a different story.

<comment><USER4> Yes, they are supposed to. That's the whole point - it's parents' responsibility, not yours or government's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Title doesn't (really) reflect that this was part of a test, and not that someone was found to have smuggled a 3D printed weapon in.

Also, the article does not mention whether or not ammunition was smuggled as well; I'd imagine that'd be harder to hide from a metal detector than plastic -- and the gun isn't much good without bullets.

<comment><USER7> Correct. The article says that the plastic pistol was brought within yards of the Prime Minister by a correspondent from a show on Israel's News 10. It says that the Israel Security Agency (sometimes known in English as "Shin Bet") characterized this act as irresponsible. It says that the weapon was tested by firing at a cardboard target.

<comment><USER4> Curiously enough, they don't exactly say they hit the target - they say they fired "towards" the target (I've read the Hebrew original of course), but it doesn't mean they actually hit it. I imagine the accuracy of such device would be pretty bad...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 3d printed guns are one of the few things I can think of that will make air travel even more inconvenient than it is now. This is going to be bad.

<comment><USER9> 3d printed guns are a lot less scary than a number of things that exist already that could do a lot more damage. Given their construction, they're only accurate to a few feet, and given their one-time use abilities, you're not going to do much with them before you get tackled by several angry co- passengers.

Were I an evil terrorist, I'd be looking much more at other, completely legal things. Items such as two-part epoxies could be used to make a crude but effective knife, lithium batteries are trivially short-circuitable to cause a fire, etc. But, such things are much less glamorous and scary than a plastic derringer that's about as dangerous to the wielder as anyone else.

<comment><USER10> It seems the existential threat to an airplane remains the same: cockpit access. Note that in some areas, taxis have more security than an airplane, in the sense that there's no way to escalate from passenger to pilot (dividing wall).

Even today, I see pilots open the cockpit during flight to use the toilet. Usually, the FA blocks the passageway with a cart. It seems plausible to me that there's a short period of time that a well-trained ninja-like attacker could leave their first class seat, and obtain cockpit access.

But I guess it'd be too expensive to provide full pilot separation.

<comment><USER11> Millions of flights a year are conducted safely with this apparently lax security. Perhaps the pilots simply weight up the minuscule risk and rate urinating in their trousers as the greater inconvenience.

Back in the 90s I still remember the day when a kind flight attendant came to my seat and took me to the cockpit of the 767 we were flying to Florida in.

Back then aircraft were occasionally hijacked, they'd be forced to divert or land somewhere and some ridiculous demands made before, more often than not, everyone was allowed to go home unhurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pre-9/11, my dad forgot a large serrated bread knife in his backpack when entering the French Parliament building. When he explained (very embarrassed and expecting trouble) that it was for his lunch, the guards smiled, gave him the knife back, and waved him through. I remember we admired how civilized the country was.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like this should be super easy to spot by outfitting X-ray machines with computer vision that can compare shapes/outlines from the X-ray image with a massive catalog of 3D printed gun schematics. Of course this would only help with assembled guns, but it's a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER14> Would it? Wouldn't the catalog be enormous, and the model could be from almost any angle? Not trying to call BS, I am not a computer vision expert, its just whenever someone says something like this I always wonder the actual feasibility.

<comment><USER15> I think it was in the 90s when I read about neural nets being used to correlate air plane type to a static silhouette (might have been radar) from any angle. Of course, airplanes can't be slightly modified and printed out in minutes, so I'm not sure this would work here, or how much of a PITA constantly retraining the neural net when new schematics are made would be.

<comment><USER14> That's pretty cool yo, thanks for illuminating!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Plastic firearms are harmless.

<comment><USER13> correction: "Plastic firearms are [currently] "harmless" [in the grander scheme of things and in most cases]."

AFAIK all current designs can only fire one bullet before breaking, making them pretty useless for most situations where someone would want one. The only legitimate threat they currently pose is targeted assassinations, and those are a non-issue if you don't have enemies. If you do, invest in bodyguards and private security instead of externalizing your security costs to tax payers.

I think the most absurd thing is worrying about planes these days. Passengers pre-9-11 are completely different than passengers post-9-11. Passengers now know to revolt against any hijackers, especially if they meet the criteria of a hijacker that would use the plane as a flying bomb. In fact, that is exactly what happened with the flight that went down in Pennsylvania. As soon as one passenger discovered what happened at the Twin Towers via their cell phone, they tried to take over the plane and averted disaster.

Plus, all that was done in the time before wifi on board. Nowadays, many people on a plane are using wifi to browse the internet, send email and chat. All those people have access to communications outside the plane, whereas in 9-11 pretty much no one did (at least not legally)

<comment><USER17> Heck, a repeat of 9-11 went out the door when they decided to lock the cockpit. Which, really, they should have done much earlier considering all the planes that were hijacked in the past and the previous attempt(s?) to use planes as weapons against buildings. I can think of at least one person who got as far as a plane, intending to have it flown into the White House, I believe, long before 9-11.

Really shoulda locked those doors....

<comment><USER10> They still open them on many flights for the pilots to access the toilet.

<comment><USER17> At least it reduces your vulnerability if you only unlock them for the few seconds it takes to step through for the toilet, I suppose. If they've some means to verify there's not a knife wielding maniac waiting outside the door the risk's probably minuscule.

Still. You'd think they'd have a toilet as part of the secure area on bigger planes - which I imagine is where most of the pilots who need to visit the men's room are. >_<</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PCI auditor asks for list of all usernames and plain text passwords - <AUTHOR> https://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-auditor-is-an-idiot-how-do-i-give-him-the-information-he-wants <comment><USER2> Post is from 2011</comment>


Ask HN: Please stop "This." - <AUTHOR>

Can we discuss "This."?
Maybe it's a very silly thing to be bothered by, but I can't be the only one agitated when I read a response to anything that begins simply with "This."
It's my personal feeling is that "This." is a sign of the decline of intelligent discourse on HN.  I feel like "This." is usually karma fishing, and that their comment more than likely adds nothing to the discourse, and is often a predictor of immaturity.
I'd like to know what everyone else thinks. <comment><USER2> I like to upvote things that I think add value to HackerNews. However, since upvotes are no longer displayed, it's impossible for my agreement or endorsement to have any visible manifestation unless I add a comment. I'd be tempted to use this emerging new idiom, except I think it looks and sounds stupid.

However, pretty much all dialectic and idiomatic shifts look stupid to those entrenched in the existing "standards" and not part of the current "in-crowd." Language changes, and as it does so it leaves behind the previous generation. Perhaps this will flourish briefly and then die out. Perhaps it will return every 10 years or so, possibly even become mundane rather than regarded by some as "cool" and others as, well, juvenile.

Personally, I think that saying "This" looks stupid, but it succinctly expresses the sentiment of the one who writes it. I certainly think it's less stupid than saying "I could care less" when one means that one doesn't care at all. Even saying "meh" would be more acceptable than that illogical expletive.

But in the end this is unhelpful. The language used here will reflect the norms of the population. You can try a King Canute and stand against the tide, but you can't win.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever considered the possibility that your or any other person's agreement with a given comment simply isn't valuable information?

<comment><USER4> I think it is. It tells us what HN readers agree with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it was popularised on vBulletin/phpBB style forums where people quote another post (using BBCode) and add nothing but "This." below, as if to say "This is what I'd have said if I got here first".

        +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>+
        | xXMasterChiefXx              |
        |</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>|
        |                              |
        |   +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----+   |
        |   | ShadowKiller2K said: |   |
        |   |</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----|   |
        |   |                      |   |
        |   | Xbawks > PS3         |   |
        |   |                      |   |
        |   +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----+   |
        |                              |
        |   This.                      |
        |                              |
        +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>+

(I'm amused that these made-up usernames have tons of results in Google!)

I remember a specific user on a forum I used to participate in that did the quote+this thing constantly, as if they were trying to build up a reputation of being a sage individual without having to do a lick of original thinking.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are there actually a significant number of posts which consist of just a single "This"? Or are you making a statement against the use of that as an opening line before someone adds their two cents.

If the former I might suggest it has something to with the fact that commenting is the only visible form of 'voting' on HN now that comment scores are hidden.

If the latter, I am completely ambivalent. Its a popular turn of phrase it successfully and succinctly communicates agreement and endorsement of the parent comment. At the same time I wouldn't mind terribly if it fell into disuse.

<comment><USER7> I had to read a couple comments in this thread before I even understood what "this" was/is. I think I would have recognized what the "this" phenomenon was if I had come across it in a number of hn posts.

I can not recall ever seeing it in a thread and I read hn somewhat frequently. The only thing I can think of is that there is a certain subculture that uses "this" and that I do not read the stories that this subculture is interested in. Does anyone have any examples?

<comment><USER8> I saw a 'this' yesterday on HN (can't recall what it was about, unfortunately) and it had me totally puzzled. I had no idea what it was there for.

I may be curmudgeonly and dumb, but I can't see where 'This' has any real advantage over 'I agree'. So 'I agree' with the OP.

<comment><USER9> Most of the time, neither "this" nor "I agree" are of value on HN. If you have something unique to add to the conversation, say it, but don't waste space letting us know that you agree. As philwelch said elsewhere, _your agreement isn't valuable information_.

There are only a couple of exceptions I can think of:

\- if someone says something about your business, personal life, or recognized area of expertise, your confirmation is of value. In that case, "I agree" is a perfectly fine standalone response.

\- if you're responding in disagreement to one part of a post, it can be helpful to mention that you agree with other parts, in order to stop responses like "you ignored the rest of what I said". Clarifying the scope of your response can help keep discussion focused, and is therefore of value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are you bothered if someone starts a post with "I completely agree with you."?

If so, I think that's strange. Why would that bother you? They're giving you an idea of what their comment will be like up front to help you understand it more easily.

If not, they why does it bother you when they say essentially the same thing with four fewer words?

It's totally fine to be annoyed by a comment that doesn't add anything or is immature, but _that's_ what you should be annoyed by, not the fact that they happened to use a particular phrase that concisely states a summary of their opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short." - pg [1]

I feel like, whatever the cause, comments that tend to start with "This." tend to be follow this pattern as well. It's not always the case, which is why I'd urge people to not use "This." when starting a sentence. I also feel like "This." hangs there to evoke a vote of karma, irrespective of comment content much more than "I completely agree with you" would, especially with people who frequent reddit.

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html>

<comment><USER11> "Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short." does not imply "Short comments are stupid".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't mind it ... and I do think its a very silly thing to be bothered by.

The entirety of your content matters here, so a singular "This" will get downvoted very quickly. But if you say "This" and follow it up with something thoughtful, then what exactly is the problem?

The colloquialisms that we'll use over the course of our time on (especially on the internet) will change frequently, new ones will pop up that require some getting used to, but that's just it ... just buckle up and adjust to it.

How people choose to communicate should be up to them, not some arbitrary lingo police.

</comment><comment><USER13> I consider it significantly less pernicious than "fanboy" and all its bastardizations and misspellings. I always feel a little warm and fuzzy inside when someone starts a reply to one of my comments with "This.".

I think its use indicates someone who maybe spends more time arguing on the internet than writing code or starting businesses or whatever other incredibly-value-generating things the Platonic Form of Hacker spends his or her time doing. At steady state, most of the content in any online community is going to come from that sort of person. Not much use pretending that ain't what's starting to happen now.

</comment><comment><USER14> Do we really need to waste our time discussing "This."? That's what down- voting is for.

Ok, my $0.02 - Agreeing with someone isn't contributing to the conversation and if you can't take the time to think of something original to say, don't say it (or face the down-vote). It would be nice to have this added to the "comments" section of the Guidelines.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's better to use grammatically correct and conventionally accepted statements.

Beginning a response with "I agree" or "Good point" reads pleasantly, without the nails-on-chalkboard effect of the internet-nerd-herd-mind irritating-and- head-scratching-to-regular-people nerd-convention of "This".

Stupid nerds. They seem to like to demonstrate how "non-conforming" they are, but reading sites like this, or worse, reddit, shows how readily they imitate one big nerd group.

<comment><USER15> And the user "mindcrime", commenting elsewhere in this thread, is a fine specimen for my above points:

      ... I'm the kind of person who likes doing things
      differently, just to irk people like you. I don't see
      much value in blind adherence to tradition for
      tradition's sake. I like killing sacred cows, stirring
      the pot...

      ... I'm a radically individualistic anarcho-capitalist /
      libertarian / atheist type, so I'm just a touch outside
      of what you might call mainstream...

Oh yes, so "radically individualistic." More like his internet-Dawkins atheism is keeping him in a perpetual mental state of rebellion, so that he feels the need to "kill sacred cows" towards people he doesn't even know, by "stirring the pot." The attitude and nerd-rebellion with grammar is comical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can we also stop "fail" as a one-word sentence? I'd appreciate it.

I've stopped participating in any site where the usage of internet memes is anything above negligible. Reading that crap actually makes _me_ feel stupider.

<comment><USER17> That's a shame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hate it when people say "and what not". Oh, and "cool beans" makes me cringe.

I'm just saying, this is something that really shouldn't be bothering you. It's a convention of online conversation. It means that someone thinks you've hit the nail on the head with your point.

Example:

This. And now I'm going to say why I think your idea is cool beans and what not.

</comment><comment><USER19> The problems are that upvotes are invisible and anonymous. The website has no built-in mechanism to tell other people that they should pay attention to a given post.

<comment><USER20> IIRC the individual posts are sorted by votes so upvoting should be sufficient

<comment><USER19> They're sorted by a weird combo of recentness, upvotes, and lack of downvotes.

There's no way to tell if a 1-hour-old comment has more upvotes than a 30-second-old comment positioned above it on the page.

There's no way to tell if a single comment in a subthread has 0 upvotes or 100. This is the biggest problem, IMHO. Factual statements have no visible score for correctness.

There's no way to tell if a comment was upvoted for being interesting, or factually correct.

There's no way to tell if the person who upvoted your comment is the same person you replied to.

<comment><USER21> Why are you relying on a bunch of random people from the internet to vet factual accuracy? I'm cool with them finding me interesting things, but that's about all I'd trust them for.

For example: I use yelp to see when stores are open/closed and if a coffee shop has wifi. I could care less about the reviews, unless one of them happens to position a specific deal I'd be interested in.

<comment><USER22> Others' opinions are a litmus test that saves me a lot of time in the long run. I simply don't have the bandwidth to go deep on everything that hits my radar.

<comment><USER21> Which is why an 'ambiguous' vote is a good system. It provides you just the right amount of information: "a lot of people think this is worth your time to investigate." Nothing more, nothing less.

<comment><USER22> This is only true if 'ambiguous' is synonymous with 'exactly matching my own criteria'. Usually, it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's a very silly thing to be bothered by. It's just that once you noticed it, you saw it everywhere, even though it wasn't happening any more or less than before. And now that you've posted this, it will bother you even more when you see it, because "they ignored my post dammmit."

In my experience, when I start getting annoyed by anonymous users on web sites, that's more a reflection on my current state than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER24> I agree, it is extremely irritating. Generally it's the last resort of someone unable to explain a coherent statement of agreement.

</comment><comment><USER25> Agreed but I think your whole post is a karma fishing redditesque 'Does anyone else' self-post.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if this is a generational divide, I assume that it's something that gets under my skin because I'm an old guy (35! Gasp!) and I frown on people using _my_ language in a way that diverges from how I've always used it.

It feels like a sort of Internet-speak affectation (something I know a thing or two about) that wouldn't show up in spoken language or other forms of written language. I can see how that would bug people.

<comment><USER27> _I wonder if this is a generational divide, I assume that it's something that gets under my skin because I'm an old guy (35! Gasp!)_

I doubt age has anything to do with it. I'm 38, but I don't dislike the "this" thing much at all. In fact, I do it myself sometimes.

 _and I frown on people using my language in a way that diverges from how I've always used it._

See, I'm the kind of person who likes doing things differently, just to irk people like you. I don't see much value in blind adherence to tradition for tradition's sake. I like killing sacred cows, stirring the pot, ruffling feathers, and reminding people that "We've always done it this way" is not a valid justification (in and of itself) for doing things a certain way.

Then again, I'm a radically individualistic anarcho-capitalist / libertarian / atheist type, so I'm just a _touch_ outside of what you might call mainstream...

<comment><USER26> "We've always done it this way" is a terrible justification for the status quo. Absolutely.

To me, it's more like "if you use words in a way that diverges from what people can reasonably expect, nobody can understand what the fuck you're saying"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In my opinion it's just a commonly used term in which I subconsciously process as something else. Whenever I read a reply that begins with "This." I instead hear "I couldn't agree with you more." Typically, the comment doesn't stop there and the author would elaborate as to why he or she agrees.

Do you just stop reading the comment at the point of "This."? Oftentimes, the reason justifies use of the word.

</comment><comment><USER20> What exactly does "This." signify? In terms of magnitude, is it similar to "I agree" or to "I strongly agree" or to "I vehemently agree"?

<comment><USER29> I usually interpret it as "I couldn't agree more."

<comment><USER19> Right, you only use it when the person has completely captured your ideas or feelings on the subject, and you have nothing left to add.

<comment><USER3> Then add nothing. Your agreement isn't valuable information.

<comment><USER29> That's the OP's point, yes, but parent comment asked for a definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thank you for bringing this up! Like you, I vehemently recoil when I spot a "This." in the wild.

To me, "This." == "I am incapable of formulating my own thoughts and therefore choose to fully agree with whatever that guy above me just said."

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't like it but am more accepting of it when it is followed by a paragraph or so of useful content that the parent post did not include (for example, another argument supporting the same conclusion).

</comment><comment><USER32> It's a shorter way to write "I completely agree with you, and I want people to know it, but I have nothing left to add". Language and expression changes, especially in the world of Twitter and social media. People want to be part of a group and express agreement. It's nothing more than a nod, expressed verbally. I'm not annoyed by people who nod in agreement.

</comment><comment><USER33> Mixed feelings when it is the precursor to a cogent, interesting comment. Agree completely to stopping it when it forms the entire content of a comment.

Not displaying points was a careful, considered decision. Live with it.

As an aside, if pg decides he doesn't like comments that consist of (or begin with) "This.", they would be pretty easy to penalize. ;-)

<comment><USER34> How often do you see posts of just "This." that aren't downvoted to gray?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Provided that it is used as a preamble to signify agreement, and that then this agreement is expanded upon by the author, I do not see any problem with it.

It's kind of like explicitly using the "this->" or "this." formation in C++ or Java or what have you: sure, it may seem needlessly verbose, but it usually doesn't present a major issue when parsing code and can often help make sure you are in the right area when thinking about things.

"This." is useful, provided that it isn't all that's said.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nobody should be replying to a thread simply to say they agree/disagree with it without adding to the discussion - that's what the upvote/downvote buttons are for. Perhaps a community rule should be added and mods can enforce it.

</comment><comment><USER37> This? Again? What happened to the last thread?

</comment><comment><USER38> This was already mentioned a couple of weeks ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3153377>

</comment><comment><USER39> This.

<comment><USER40> That.

<comment><USER32> The other thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What's the point of "This."?

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe it's shorthand for "{this()}" ?

Sorry couldn't resist.

I'm not really bothered by it in the comments, I guess it's kind of a substitue for "agreed" or "totally".</comment>


Ask HN: How much of your personal life did you have to give up for your startup? - <AUTHOR>

Perhaps this shows that I don't want my own business enough, but one of my biggest concerns is that I won't have time to see friends or enjoy any hobbies (or read HN!) any more. Is it really true you end up with zero personal life, and if so, for how long? I understand it varies greatly from founder to founder, but I'm still curious. <comment><USER2> I don't believe that this should ever go to zero. I think the heart of this question is : how do you maximize long term productivity? For me, if I work more than 70-77 hours a week for an extended period, my productivity drops. I can flirt with 90 hours in a pinch, but once I break 70 hours I start to make mistakes. I don't know about you, but my experience in writing software is that it is like poker in the sense that a single mistake can end up costing a lot. So, that translates to an optimal 10-11 hours a day with an occasional 12 hour day. This leaves 5-7 hours of free time per day. I also believe that a balanced mind, body and emotions leads to better results than overemphasizing one or the other. So, I focus on exercising to keep a sound body, sleeping 7-8 hours per night and spending an hour or two relaxing every day. Of course, I'm not rich yet, either.</comment>